The present invention relates to a telephone terminal and a caller ID utilization method in which a caller ID, of which the telephone terminal is notified at the time of a call reception, is captured and utilized.
A caller ID notification service in which a reception-side telephone terminal is notified of the telephone number (caller ID) of a calling-side telephone terminal at the time of a call reception is now being put into practical use as a service provided by a telephone company.
By virtue of the caller ID notification service, a reception-side user can recognize a caller ID before an off-hook manipulation by, for example, having it displayed on an LCD (liquid crystal display) of his own telephone terminal.
By checking a caller ID, a user can not only respond, at ease, to a call from a person such as his friend or acquaintance who calls the user frequently but also prevent effectively a prank call, a persistent solicitation call, or the like.
By the way, it is conceivable to not only display, on an LCD of a telephone terminal, a caller ID that is given by the caller ID notification service, but also allow the caller ID to be captured to a memory of the telephone terminal and utilized thereafter, to thereby provide a telephone terminal that is easier to use. For example, while a reception-side telephone terminal is in an automatic answering mode, pieces of reception history information each consisting of a caller"" number that is given by the caller ID notification service and corresponding reception time that is obtained from a timer of the telephone terminal may be stored in a memory in a cumulative manner.
In this case, even if a person who made a call (i.e., a caller) did not leave a message, a reception-side user can recognize the telephone number of the person who made the call and the time of the call based on the reception history information. Therefore, the reception-side user can call back.
However, even if a telephone terminal is so configured as to capture a caller ID that is given by the caller ID notification service, there may occur cases that a caller ID cannot be utilized in such a manner as to satisfy a user""s requirement. For example, it is a common measure that when pieces of reception history information have been stored to such an extent as to fill up the storage capacity of a memory for storing reception history information, a new piece of reception history information is left by causing it to overwrite the oldest one. However, in this case, there may occur an event that a relatively old piece of reception history information that is necessary for the user of the telephone terminal is not stored in the memory of the telephone terminal.
Usually, the memory for storing reception history information is not required to store a large amount of reception history information. Therefore, it is not rational to use, for storage of reception history information, a large-capacity memory, which leads to an increase in the cost and size of a telephone terminal. With this understanding, for example, a memory having a storage capacity that allows storage of on the order of tens of pieces of reception history information is used as the memory for storing reception history information.
However, it is highly possible that the memory for storing reception history information becomes full soon in the case of a user who receives calls frequently or in a case where a telephone terminal operates in an automatic answering mode for several days because, for example, the user goes on a trip.
As described above, there may occur cases that a caller ID that is given by the caller ID notification service and captured to a telephone terminal cannot be utilized satisfactorily.
In view of the above problems in the art, an object of the present invention is therefore to provide a telephone terminal which enables more effective utilization of a caller ID that is given by the caller ID notification service as well as a caller ID utilization method which enables a telephone terminal to utilize a caller ID more effectively.
The invention provides a telephone terminal comprising caller ID detecting means for detecting a caller ID that is given at the time of a call reception in an automatic answering mode operation; a reception history memory for storing pieces of reception history information each correlating at least a caller ID detected by the caller ID detecting means and the number of times of reception of calls from a caller of the caller ID; reception history updating means for incrementing the number of times of call reception in a piece of reception history information already stored in the reception history memory if a caller ID detected this time by the caller ID detecting means coincides with a caller ID of the piece of reception history information, and for generating new reception history information having the caller ID detected this time by the caller ID detecting means and additionally storing it in the reception history memory if the caller ID detected this time by the caller ID detecting means does not coincide with the caller ID of the piece of reception history information; and display control means for performing a control so that one of the pieces of reception history information stored in the reception history memory is read out and displayed on a display device.
In this telephone terminal, when a plurality of calls have been received from the same caller, the number of times of call reception in reception history information having the caller ID of the caller is updated, to avoid an event that plural pieces of reception history information having the same caller ID exist in the call history memory. Therefore, more pieces of reception history information can be stored in the reception history memory and hence the reception history memory can be used more efficiently.
Since the number of times of call reception is counted for each caller ID, a caller ID and the number of times of call reception can easily be displayed on the display device of the telephone terminal so as to be correlated with each other. As a result, a user can recognize at a glance how many calls have been received from a particular caller without the need for searching for all pieces of reception history information.